“We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth
is persisting.”

That statement is pretty much a lie.

It's not completely a lie, because no one ever has a
"precise read" on why the economy is doing anything. But
it's a statement that ignores an elephant in the room, one that
every open-eyed economist and market observer on the planet
appears to be aware of except for Ben Bernanke.

After such debt-binges, we often go through what are known as
"balance
sheet recessions." In these recessions, recoveries are slow
because the economy needs to "de-leverage"--meaning that it needs
to work off the debt that built up in the decades leading up to
the crisis. As the chart below illustrates, in the early
80s, Americans began to borrow more and more relative to their
incomes--and they didn't stop borrowing until 2007.

And as anyone who has ever had to cut back spending to work off
credit card debt knows, it's a lot harder to live large when
you're deleveraging than when you're borrowing and spending.

Professor Ben Bernanke is a brilliant economist. It is
inconceivable that he is unaware of the work of Rogoff, Reinhart,
et al. And, therefore, every time Bernanke shrugs his shoulders
and says he can't imagine what the problem might be, he is
intentionally playing stupid.

If Bernanke doesn't believe the work of Reinhart and Rogoff--or
doesn't believe that we need to reduce our debts--fine. But if he
doesn't believe those things, then he needs to say so, and
explain why not. Because the evidence that Reinhart and Rogoff
are right is highly persuasive.

The last massive economy to go through a "balance sheet
recession" is Japan--and Japan's economy has been sputtering for
two decades. There are obviously many differences between Japan's
economy and the US economy, but the basic
debt-binge-followed-by-deleveraging is the same.

Ben Bernanke didn't make us borrow all that money. Ben Bernanke
didn't tell us to rush out and get adjustable rate mortgages
(like Greenspan). Ben Bernanke didn't pooh-pooh all financial
regulation until the entire financial system collapsed (like
Greenspan). Ben Bernanke didn't get us into this mess.

So, why can't Bernanke just say that, odds are, the need to
continue to reduce our debts will result in slow growth for many
more years?

Why can't he just level with the American people about the
situation we're in?

Why does he have to pretend that it's just a complete mystery?

Is he afraid that, if he tells the whole truth, the country will
get so depressed that we'll just give up? Does he think we can't
handle the truth? Is he that worried about getting
canned that he's just not willing to step back and address this
question forthrightly?

Level with us, Ben. We can handle it. We've overcome tougher
challenges than this one.